


All the Times

by agoodwoman



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, MSR, x files msr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 14:43:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8804929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agoodwoman/pseuds/agoodwoman
Summary: Scully reacted so strangely after Mulder said I love you... what if it's because it wasn't the first time he said it?





	1. Chapter 1

**i.**  
It wasn’t the first time Fox Mulder uttered the words “I love you” to Dana Scully. The man, under the influence of any painkilling drug cocktail, had the tendency to confess his feelings at will with a frank attitude as though it was the first time every time.

The first time was after Mulder had been shot. Scully’s emotions were feeling raw after the loss of her father and listening to Luther Boggs channel him had only opened the wound. She went to Mulder’s bedside to check in on him. The machines on his heart monitor were beeping at regular intervals as she was reading his chart. He wasn’t under any anesthesia and sleeping soundly with a steady morphine drip into his system.

“Hey,” his voice was groggy as he became aware of her standing by his bed with his chart in her hands. “Am I gonna make it?”

She sniffled. “Yeah, you’re doing fine.”

“What’s wrong, Scully?” he asked as he wrapped his fingers around her wrist. He felt warm to her and she set his chart on the bedside table to touch his forehead. “Dana?”

“I’m fine,” she lied as she put her fingers to his skin. “You feel a little warm.”

“You’re so nice…” he said and his voice trailed off.

Scully smiled tightly and looked over at his chart to see the last check-in from his nurse. They noted his elevated temperature and gave him Tylenol.

She repeated his sentiment, “I’m nice?”

“You’re nice,” he said again. “You’re pretty, too.”

Scully’s cheeks flushed at the compliment. “Oh…”

“I have to say something,” he said and swallowed heavily. Scully leaned forward and waited for his news. “I love Scully.”

It absolutely terrified her to hear him say that. They had only been partners for six months and they were still working through a lot of trust issues while learning how to make their forced partnership work. She worried he actually meant it.

“I can’t tell Scully,” he whispered secretively as he moved toward her. “She’s no-nonsense about mushy stuff.”

 _Oh,_ she thought. 

“Is she?” she asked.

Mulder shrugged as he flopped back toward the bed. “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe. I think it would bother her.”

Scully looked over his chart to check his dosage and as she turned back to her partner, he was snoring quietly with his fingers still wrapped around her wrist. She retracted herself from his grasp and drove home wondering exactly what the hell just happened. Her scientific mind deduced that he was under the influence of a narcotic and not aware of what he was saying. Logically, she might deduce that he might not even mean it romantically or otherwise.

Three days later as Scully was signing him out of the hospital, Mulder sat awkwardly in a wheelchair meant for someone five inches shorter.

“So Scully, am I all clear?” he asked.

She looked down at his face and tried to determine if he was asking about his confession or medically.

“You’re going to be fine,” she said. “Ready to go?”

Mulder patted the crutches he was holding across his lap. “Me and my new sticks.”

 

 

**ii.**

The next time he uttered the words their skin was raw from bug bites and they were forced to wear sterile pyjamas on a high dosage of painkillers and antiviral medications. A little trip to the forest had almost turned deadly from lime green mites that threatened to turn everyone and everything it came into contact with into a cocoon from which there was no escape.

She had been awoken to witness a team of medics cutting off her clothing as Mulder lay bare next to her on a gurney four feet away. They were about to take him to a decontamination shower when he suddenly yelled her name.

“Where is she?” he cried to the medic. “Is she okay?”

“She’s right here. You’re going to be fine,” the doctor assured him but he was frantic.

“Scully!”

“He must be having an allergic reaction to the morphine,” the doctor noted. “Give him ten cc’s of haloperidol.”

“Scully,” he muttered as the dosage took effect. “I love you.”

Scully made eye contact with the nurse cutting off her shirt before she closed her eyes. She waited for a sleep where she could push away thoughts of her partner professing his love for her in a crowded hospital room.

The morphine induced her sleep and she awoke the next day with a concerned Mulder standing over her.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

The look on his face was one of deep concern and she knew he didn’t recall a single moment from the day before.

“Sore,” she said as she touched her hand to her face below where she could feel the application of a balm to help the dermis repair. “You?”

Mulder shook his head kind of incredulously. “I’m just grateful we’re standing here talking to you. The rescue team came just in time.”

Scully nodded and looked down the bed to where she was covered in heated blankets. “Did they tell you how long we would be here for?”

“Thirteen days,” Mulder reported. He sat down in the chair next to her bed. “We could get a deck of cards and play Gin Rummy.”

Scully attempted a smile but it hurt her chapped lips a little too much. “Sure thing, Mulder.”

She spent the next thirteen days deciding that Mulder’s drug-induced professions of love had been a hallucination of her own mind.

 

 

**iii.**

The next time Mulder professed his feelings he was feverish and delirious from a drug put into his water supply. He arrived at her apartment with a temperature of a hundred and two. He complained he felt hot and he was sweating whatever he had been dosed with out of his system. It wasn’t working.

“Scully,” he whispered as she guided him toward her spare bedroom. “Scully, he killed my father.”

She left him in the spare room to fetch her medical bag. As she pulled out a bottle of Diazepam, she thought about Mulder’s proclivity for confessions. She needed him to sleep, which he hadn’t been over the last few weeks. He told her as much that his usual four to five hour rests on his couch had been shortened to one to two hours. He was exhausted and his mind would break down if he didn’t sleep eventually.

Scully pulled two mg’s into a needle and injected his arm. Better to risk the confessional from Mulder than to have him sleepwalk in the middle of the night and potentially hurt himself.

“I’m hot,” he complained again. “It’s too hot in here.”

Scully hesitated but she knew it wasn’t that kind of request. “I’ll help you get undressed.”

Mulder nodded and he sat up on the bed to lift his arms above his head as though he was a child.

She smiled at the action and she pulled his tank top off over his head. She folded the garment and laid it on the chair in the corner. When she turned around, he was standing directly behind her.

“Jesus, Mulder,” she declared.

“You take such good care of me,” he said groggily. He fumbled with his belt buckle and looked at her helplessly. “I can’t get them off.”

She pressed her lips together and reached for his belt. Slowly with a shaking hand, she undid the buckle and unzipped his fly. The button popped open at his waist easily and she almost called him on the request for help as a way to get her to undress him but she remembered he didn’t recall any of his previous confessions of love.

As she helped him step out of his jeans, she tried to avoid looking down at his boxer briefs and laid them on the chair next to his shirt. She turned back to him to see him still standing in the very place she took off his pants with a hopeful smile on his face.

“Let’s get you into bed,” she suggested nervously.

Mulder shuffled his feet toward the bed, his socks hanging slightly off his feet, and he tripped a little to bring them both on the bed together. They landed with a surprised grunt with limbs tangled together. Mulder’s arm was heavy across her chest and he looked at her with an innocent surprise.

“Are we having a sleepover?” he asked without a single drip of innuendo and she almost laughed. “Scully?”

“No Mulder, you fell on me,” she said patiently and pushed his arm off her to get up from the bed. She turned around to tuck him under the covers and he smiled at her happily. “Let me guess.”

“Guess what?” he asked and his eyes closed.

Scully sighed in relief and turned herself toward the door to leave him to sleep.

“Scully?” he called to her and she turned around to him to see him waving her back. She approached the bed slowly and put the compress back on his head. “Scully, I love you. Thank you.”

She pressed her lips together. “Okay. Have a good sleep.”

“Say it back,” he told her with a sad tone she almost found heartbreaking. “Say it.”

“I love you too, Mulder,” she placated and switched off his bedside light.

He was snoring before she found the door handle in the darkness of her apartment.

 

  
**iv.**

Their suspect, Samuel Aboah, was in custody and Mulder was being pumped full of IV fluids in the ambulance as the paramedics drove to the hospital. He had escaped being lobotomized from a proboscis in search of his pituitary gland.

While he drooled on the gurney, she watched as he tried to lift his hand to wipe at his mouth. Scully held onto the bar next to her as they bumped along the highway.

Mulder grunted again and Scully found a tissue in her jacket pocket to wipe at his cheek. He grunted his thanks and she nodded.

“Your partner got it pretty good,” the attending paramedic noted. He was riding in the back of the bus with Scully.

“He’s lucky you were there,” the driver said and turned on the sirens to race through traffic.

Scully put two finger’s to Mulder’s neck and counted his pulse. “His heart rate is elevated.”

The paramedic next to her reached across and put his fingers on Mulder’s throat and held her wrist with his other hand. Mulder shrugged his shoulder with a concerned look on his face and the medic dropped his hand.

“Is he usually this difficult?” the paramedic asked with a grin.

Scully looked at his name tag and read Brookes. “Call it a job hazard.”

Brookes smiled at her and she made the observation that he was a decent looking man maybe two or three years older than her. His short blonde hair and fit frame were bonuses to a nice looking face. When they were loading Mulder into the ambulance, Scully noted that Brookes stood well over a head taller than her.

“How much longer are you going to be in Philidelphia for?” Brookes asked with a grin she decided was more than professional curiosity.

“We leave tomorrow,” Scully answered quietly and felt a flush on her cheeks.

Mulder grunted from the gurney and she noted him rolling his eyes.

They pulled into the emergency bay at the hospital and Brookes jumped into action to get Mulder out of the bus. He extended his hand to help Scully down as Brookes’ partner pulled Mulder out of the way for the doors to close.

Mulder was straining his neck to watch the interaction and Scully’s brain fired off warning signals he would comment on this later.

Brookes attempted to ask for her number before his radio called to the next emergency. He gave her a rueful grin and wished her good luck.

It took a morphine drip and a rally pack into Mulder’s system as they waited in a semi-private area of the ER before Mulder had control of his facilities such as speech and motor function.

“Are you going on a date?” he asked her with a pitiful tone that meant he felt bad for himself he had to listen to the exchange.

“No,” she answered immediately.

She wasn’t sure why it mattered who she spent her off-hours with as long as she was free to run across the country with him for a case.

Mulder’s arm lifted slowly and he pulled on her suit jacket sleeve to bring her closer to him. She recognized the glassy-eyed stare and the slow smile.

“You’re pretty,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. Arguing with him over that when he was drugged never did much.

“I’m curious,” he told her and she raised her eyebrows to prompt him to continue. Trying to tell him to stop talking while he was drugged also was futile. “I’m curious about something, Scully.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I like your little overbite,” he told her and his finger reached up to touch her lip softly. He studied her face where he just had his finger tip. “You lick your lips a lot. Do they taste good?”

“Mulder,” she warned.

“I wouldn’t do it unless you said it was okay….” he said sounding more like an inexperienced teenager than a man in his thirties. His hand wrapped around her arm and he pulled her a little closer to him on the bed. “Is it okay, Scully? I respect you.”

“Not…” she started.

“Just a kiss?”

She didn’t feel the predatory yearning that was familiar from her teen years of trying to thwart advances from young men she was hardly interested in. This was different. He was asking in this innocent way as though it would be experimental and not at all hinder on their working relationship. His curiosity had gotten the better of him and he expressed a desire. Logically, she could understand it but practically she knew it would be a mistake.

“Not like this, Mulder.”

“When?” he asked as his hands moved to her waist and she felt her skin flush with something other than embarrassment.

Scully licked her lip and she watched his eyes flicker down to watch the action. He repeated it himself and she watched his mouth.

“If you remember in the morning,” she told him with the knowledge he definitely would not. “After you’re discharged.”

“I’ll brush my teeth,” he promised and his head dropped to the pillow but his fingers danced along her waistline.

She retracted herself quietly from his grasp and he snored solidly while she noted on his chart the reaction to morphine. Her mind raced through the drug-induced confession and she tried to determine if this was hormonal and physical or romantic.

She wouldn’t have to wait long to find out which.

 

 

**v.**

Mulder tapped his fingers on the bar of the Urban Taco in the Dallas airport as he waited for his next drink to arrive. He had two margaritas under his belt and was about to receive a third before they boarded their plane back to Washington D.C.

He was celebrating, practically gloating, about the vampires pulling up stakes, pun intended. They ran away from Chaney, Texas and Mulder and Scully were no longer being sued for four hundred and forty-six million dollars. Scully ordered a lime margarita too, since they had escaped their lawsuit and prosecutorial retribution.

“Want another?” Mulder asked as Scully finished her glass and she shook her head. “Barkeep! Another lime margarita for my skeptical partner.”

“Mulder, I said no,” she whispered but she accepted the drink when it was set in front of her anyway.

The drugs in her system with the alcohol were making her feel groggy but they had three more hours until they flew to Washington. Aside from purchasing cowboy boots, the Urban Taco bar and grill was the only thing left for them to do.

Mulder smiled at her as she licked the salt off the rim before taking a sip. “You do that on purpose?”

Scully narrowed her eyes at him over her glass. When she set down her drink she asked, “What?”

“You know what,” he told her. “You lick things like no one is supposed to notice that’s kind of hot.”

“Mulder,” she said as a warning but also in surprise.

Just in saying his name she could be shocked, awed or angry and he knew exactly what each inflection meant every time. He asked what anyway.

“You know what,” she told him.

“You talk about raining sleeping bags and I’m not supposed to comment you’re hot?” he asked. He finished his margarita and propped his head in his hand as his elbow dug into the shiny bar top. “Scully?”

“You brought up being naked in a sleeping bag first,” she reminded him.

The bartender caught her eye and she held up two fingers. If they were going to talk about this, she needed more alcohol in her system.

“You two want to order some food yet?” the bartender asked as he set the square tumblers in front of them.

“What’s your special?” Mulder asked.

“Tacos carnitas,” the bartender said.

“We’ll get two orders of those and whatever your healthiest salad is,” Mulder said. “Dressing on the side.”

Scully licked at the salt at the rim and glanced up to see Mulder watching her tongue. “Don’t look if it bothers you.”

“It doesn’t bother me in a bad way,” he said and pulled the lime off the edge of his glass. He bit down on the sour fruit and sucked the juice from it before leaving the rind on his bar napkin. “So.”

“So?”

“Did you kiss the vampire sheriff with the buck teeth?” Mulder asked innocently.

Scully laughed. “What?”

“Before you argue about his accent or buck teeth, answer me if you kissed him,” Mulder said in a coaxing way that had her almost thinking about answering him. “Did you kiss Sheriff Hartwell?”

Scully pulled her chin back as she thought about why he needed to know. “Um….”

“Don’t say you did,” he groaned and took a sip from his glass. He set it down carefully and looked at her with a longing. “Did you kiss him?”

“No,” she said and she was pretty sure that was the truth. “I was drugged but I wasn’t drunk.”

Mulder’s hand moved from his knee to around the back of her bar stool. “Really?”

“What are you insinuating?” she asked.

He shrugged happily. “Nothing.”

Scully cocked her head to the side. “No really.”

“Drunk Dana Scully might let a man kiss her if she was inclined?” he asked.

“Mulder, I’m not that easy,” she told him.

“That I’m painfully aware of,” he said and finished the rest of his drink.

Her jaw dropped in shock. “Painful? You want to talk about painful? I’ve been listening to you-”

“Drone on and on for six years,” he interrupted. “About little grey men and a global conspiracy.”

Their tacos carnitas were set in front of them next to a giant salad with a four ounce container of dressing on the side. “Enjoy.”

“Alien conspiracies aren’t very romantic,” Mulder said glumly. “I get it.”

Scully decided not to tell him about all the previous confessions of desire and professions love. She ate her tacos in silence as Mulder contemplated why she didn’t kiss the sheriff. It didn’t occur to Mulder that it might be because the sheriff didn’t try.

It wasn’t until they were on the plane as Mulder’s buzz began to truly set in that he turned to her and said, “If he didn’t try to kiss you, he’s an idiot.”

 

  
**vi.**

Imagine her genuine surprise that during daylight hours, without morphine in Mulder’s system, he would confess his love and need for her in his life. The man could confess how he felt under the influence of a narcotic with an eloquent expression of needing to taste her lips but had yet to utter a word soberly that his feelings for her were based on a need to feel something about himself other than frustration.

“You kept me honest,” he said. “You made me a whole person.”

It hit her inside to the deepest core of who they were as partners. He was aware of how he felt. Over the last five years, they had grown to be more than partners but finally and fully, they completed each other. He was the other half to the side of her that felt it like was missing and he was laying it out on the table without anything to blame it on later.

She told him she held him back but he called her on that lie because they both knew it wasn’t true. If he went on alone, without her in the FBI, he’d be dead or locked away in a jail without anyone to bail him out. Over the years, she worried he looked at her like a pesky younger sister type, a sexless robot of information that was recording secrets because outside of his drug-induced confessions, he could treat her sort of terribly at times.

It was when he looked at her with that yearning and passion that she realized he was going to make good on a request he had proposed two years previously. He wanted to kiss her and she was more than okay with it happening.

It was right as she felt his soft lips brush against hers that pain shot through her neck and she knew she had been stung.

Mulder’s instinct was that he had hurt her and her heart momentarily ached for a man who had assumed the only thing to stop a kiss was his own clumsiness.

When she awoke in a hospital in Antarctica, Mulder was mumbling about a stupid bee in the bed next to her. She attempted a smile but her chapped lips prevented the action.

“Scully,” he mumbled to the doctor as her vital signs were being rechecked.

“He’s got a tendency to run his mouth on morphine or most any pain killer,” Scully told the nurse who was writing notes on a chart. “Just disregard anything he says.”

The nurse smiled politely at Scully and joined the doctor at Mulder’s bedside.

“Scully,” Mulder muttered again.

“Agent Mulder,” the doctor called to Mulder as they tried to wake him. “Agent Scully is right here.”

Mulder’s head jerked off the pillow of the bed. “Where? Is she okay?”

“She’s fine,” the doctor assured him.

“That’s bullshit she says when she’s trying to be brave. Don’t take her word for it,” Mulder groaned as he rolled over. He caught Scully looking at him in the bed next to him. “Oh, hi Scully.”

“We’re okay, Mulder,” Scully told him.

He looked at her with wet eyes as he attempted to smile through chapped lips and a wind-burnt face. Something registered in his mind suddenly and she was wondering if he remembered trying to kiss her in his hallway and if he was, if he regretted it.

When the doctors left with IV bags of fluids dripping into their arms and the lights dim in the medic bay, Scully cleared her throat.

“Did they give you any painkillers, Mulder?” she asked in the darkness.

“I think something. I feel foggy,” he said. “And my head isn’t throbbing.”

Scully sighed. “Okay.”

“Why?” he asked.

There was a beat and she cleared her throat again. “Just waiting for you to get chatty.”

Mulder sighed. “You wouldn’t really let me kiss you, would you?”

Scully detected a tone of disbelief. “Did you want to?”

“Of course I wanted to!” he said emphatically. She heard him rustling around in the bed. “You’d be crazy to let me.”

“Okay,” she sighed. “I’ll bite. Why?”

Mulder snorted. “I’d be a terrible boyfriend.”

“Is that what you think I want?” she countered.

“You know I love you, right?” he asked in a way like it was normal for him to reassure her with those words. “Scully?”

“Mulder, go to sleep,” she groaned as she rolled over on her hospital bed.

“Why are you mad?” he asked.

“What would have happened after you kissed me?” she asked quietly. Mulder chuffed a laugh and she felt her cheeks flush. “After that.”

“I… I don’t know… Faced retribution together? Gone to the FBI and told them we weren’t quitting?” he guessed.

“Then what?” she asked.

“I told you I would make a bad boyfriend,” he repeated as though he told her that every day for the last five years.

“I didn’t try to kiss you,” she reminded him. “You tried to kiss me.”

“I love you,” he said with frankness and slurred speech. “I’m just not sure what to do with it.”

She scoffed. “Go to _sleep_ , Mulder.”

“Say it back,” he slurred.

“I love you too,” she said and waited for his quiet snoring to fill the small room.

After five years and countless confessions from him, she was finally aware of what it meant to him. In that medic bay, she finally asked herself how she felt about him. Yes, she loved Mulder. Yes, she was interested in finding out if that was a romantic love but neither of them were ready for that step.

When she awoke in the medic bay, Mulder was snoring soundly. The frustration she was feeling toward their standstill would soon turn to anger and frustration. She would deal with that over wonder and yearning because it was easier to revel in a frustration than wander through a dream.


	2. Chapter 2

**vii.**

Byers, Langley, Frohike and Skinner had left Scully to deal with a concussed Mulder. He was propped up on his elbow with a slight gash on his forehead and a hopeful grin on his face. Skinner warned him of a pending reprimand but Scully could see Mulder didn’t care. He was too happy gloating about a version of her in 1939 who saved the world.

The last few months had been a little rough. Getting assigned under A.D. Kersh, Diana Fowley and Jeffrey Spender taking over the X-Files and the weaknesses in their communication skills had shined a giant spotlight on their issues.

The last twelve hours she had spent looking so frantically for him, she felt those issues melt away. She was so concerned with his whereabouts and well-being, part of her was so tickled at his appearance in the Bermuda Triangle, she forgot to be angry at him.

“Yes?” she said with a slight amusement to her voice.

They held each other’s gaze for a moment. She could feel him winding up for a giant confession but she knew what was coming.

“I love you,” he said with the earnestness of a man who had never said it previously.

He was saying it like he dropped a bomb, told her for the first time and this was a giant reveal to his feelings.

Except it wasn’t. It was something he had said to her repeatedly over the last seven years. Since they began as partners, he had been confessing his feelings and she had finally grown sick of his stance on the edge of action. The man tried to kiss her and then announced he would be a terrible boyfriend. What did he expect her to say to yet another confessional?

“Oh brother,” she replied after a beat and left him laying on his side with his hopeful expression.

What was the point in replying? Thankfully, he didn’t ask her to say it back this time.

When Scully exited his hospital room, Skinner was waiting for her and cleared his throat in an obvious attempt to begin a conversation. She had grabbed him by his muscular biceps and pulled him to kiss for getting the information she needed to find Mulder.

It was purely emotional and reactionary to his help. He would know it wasn’t romantic.

“Uh, sir…” she began.

“I’m not your superior anymore, Agent Scully,” he told her again. “I won’t report you for getting involved with-”

“ _No_ sir,” she cut him off. “I’m sorry but no. We’re not…”

Skinner stood with his hands in his trench coat pocket and took a slight step toward her. “I heard what he said.”

“Did you hear what I said?” she asked and he shook his head. In that nervous tick she had tried to thwart after Mulder mentioned it, she licked her upper lip and let out a breath. “Agent Mulder, while under the influence of narcotics, tends to say how he feels and doesn’t remember the next day.”

Skinner made a surprised expression before he could cover it with slow understanding. “How long-”

“Since we started working together,” she said and shifted uncomfortably outside Mulder’s door. She glanced behind her to see Mulder snoring away in his bed. “He’ll wake up tomorrow with no recollection and behave as though he didn’t say it.”

“That sounds emotionally constipated,” he mumbled and she shrugged. “You don’t… feel the same?”

Scully opened her mouth to respond but her brow furrowed. How she felt about Mulder lately was directly related to her displeasure in their job. Background checks were mindless work compared to the science and discovery of the X-Files office.

“I don’t know,” she confessed with flushed cheeks.

“You might want to figure that out,” he said quietly. He cleared his throat again and she recognized it as his nervous tick. “Well, regardless, I won’t report… that in there or what happened in the elevator.”

Her cheeks flushed. “It was an emotional response to your help…”

Skinner nodded. “I’ll try to smooth things over with Kersh if I can but Agent Mulder really stepped in it this time.”

“He found a luxury liner in the Bermuda Triangle previously thought to be hit by a German U-Boat,” Scully pointed out.

Skinner nodded. “And that will be reflected in my report to Kersh when I make a plea for Mulder’s ass not to be in a sling for misconduct…. and yours.”

“Is Spender filing a complaint?” Scully asked quietly.

“No,” he said. “He’s trying to grease the wheels. He’s quickly learned that reports filed against other agents won’t get him up the ladder out of the basement.”

Scully nodded in relief. She looked up at her former boss and smiled hesitantly. “I apologize for the head in your ass comment.”

He nodded. “Water under the bridge. The kiss and the head in my ass.”

Scully’s cheeks felt bright red and she returned to Mulder’s room after Skinner had left to make a note on Mulder’s chart about the auditory reaction from his painkillers. Eventually, she would find one that worked for Mulder that didn’t make him profess a love that didn’t exist.

“You kissed _Skinner_?” he said with an obvious pout.

She let out a wavering breath. “I was happy he helped me find you.”

Mulder was picking at the fabric burrs on the blanket across his legs. “Oh.”

“Are you _sulking_?” she asked.

“ _No_ …” he replied but she could hear the lie in his voice pretty clearly. “I do love you.”

Scully looked up from the metal board in her hand to see him brooding. If he wasn’t injured and currently half of the reason she felt so frustrated, she might think it was sexy… She did think he was sexy but she wasn’t going admit that to him.

“Okay, Mulder.”

“Why don’t you believe me, Scully?” he asked.

This wasn’t little grey aliens or a Big Blue sighting. This was how he felt and she wasn’t someone to argue with a feeling however she had listened to it too many times.

“If you remember any of this in the morning, I might,” she answered finally.

He opened his mouth to say something but closed it again.

“I’ll be by in the morning to pick you up. We have a meeting with Kersh at eleven,” she told him. “I’ll go by your place and bring you a suit and your toiletry kit.”

“Yeah I’ll want to brush my teeth first,” he said and a look of realization crossed his face as though he remembered all the previous times. “Wait-”

“No,” she told him firmly.

“Scully wait,” he called to her.

She pulled her mouth in a tight smile that was more regretful than happy to be leaving his space. “I’m going home. Good night, Mulder.”

She tucked his chart back onto the end of his bed and left Mulder to sulk overnight.

At this point, she didn’t care if she left him high and dry. She was annoyed she had to explain it to their former boss and it was exposing in ways she didn’t want to identify.

 

  
**viii.**

The medics were looking over Mulder after he called 911 to report a flying cow. Obviously, the call warranted a head trauma consultation as Scully stood in her silky blue pyjamas with her arms crossed over her chest. She didn’t have a bra on and it was cool for a Texas evening. Unquestionably, Mulder was staring straight at the nipples she was trying to conceal.

“How’s the pain feeling now, Agent Mulder?” the fireman asked who was first on the scene.

He had pulled out a medical bag and administered Mulder an injection of a painkiller before she could warn them not to.

“I see my lady over there,” Mulder said happily.

The drugs had kicked in.

“Your wife?” the fireman asked as he glanced over his shoulder to see Scully moving from one foot to the next.

Mulder held up his left hand. “No ring.”

“Oh, girlfriend,” the fireman corrected himself and Mulder nodded knowingly. “That’s your girlfriend?”

Mulder nodded slowly like a man with four beers under his belt. “That’s my _lady_.”

“You’re a lucky man,” the fireman told Mulder and Scully’s cheeks flushed as he nodded more emphatically. “Doc will be by shortly to look over your arm but there’s no immediate danger. Take care of your little lady there.”

Mulder beamed. “She is a little lady. She’s _so_ _small_! I had to carry her up a ladder once and she’s heavier than a lunch pail but I did it.”

The fireman looked over to Scully and she opened her mouth to explain but stopped. How do you explain that?

The manager of the motel walked over to him as the fireman left him sitting on the bench outside his room.

“Sir, we need to move your things from your room.”

“Oh put them in her room,” Mulder said as he nodded toward Scully. “That’s _my_ _lady_.”

Scully opened her mouth to speak again but a police officer called her attention away. She needed to get out of her pyjamas and into more presentable clothing if this was going to be something she was dealing with. She needed a bra on just to get Mulder to stop staring at her breasts and she needed her daytime clothing so people would stop assuming she was Mulder’s wife tagging along for the case.

It fueled a rage inside of Scully when anyone assumed she was less capable, less qualified and less able because of her gender. There were so many backwards things going on in that town and the sexism was just the tip of the iceberg. 

Scully changed into her suit quickly. When she emerged from her room, the sun began to rise over Kroner. Crews had arrived to clear the cow and repair the roof. For a small town, they certainly knew how to handle such an event.

“Scully!” Mulder called to her as he sat in the back of a pickup.

She waved to him as she approached and he frowned when he saw her suit. The uneven dirt around their motel was difficult to manage in her heels and she almost wished she had brought something more sensible.

“Why did you change?” he asked.

“The sun is up,” Scully replied.

“I liked your pyjamas,” he said as his eyes flit down to her chest then back up in such an obvious way.

“ _Mulder_ ,” she warned.

“You know what else I like?” he said quietly. “ _You_.”

“Really,” she replied quietly.

She wasn’t impressed with another confession. This whole case began with a lie.

_Scully, there’s fraud in a small town in Texas and we need to investigate it!_

She got up at a God awful hour, flew from Washington to Dallas, Dallas to Kroner, was called his wife or girlfriend a number of times and they were far from it. He put his hands on her, he touched her, he told her he loved her but they were no closer to being a couple than they were the first time he confessed his feelings.

“I just haven’t figured out how to get you on a date,” he said as though she wasn’t there. Mulder snapped his fingers. “I should tell you how I feel.”

“I thought you would make a bad boyfriend,” Scully reminded him of a conversation in Antarctica.

“I might but you could train me,” he said with a leer. “I’d be hot for teacher.”

“ _Mulder_ ,” she almost whined.

“I love you and this is how men tell women they love them,” he said haughtily as though he was such an expert.

Scully laughed. “I have to go check on your cow.”

Mulder nodded. “I love you, though.”

“Okay, Mulder. Make sure they check you for head trauma, too,” she said.

“You can check my-”

“Mulder,” she warned.

He stuck out his lower lip and nodded. “Okay.”

 

  
**ix.**

Dirt and a gelatinous goo covered every inch of her body. There was a burning sensation where goo had been wiped away and she wondered if her skin was being eaten alive by the mushroom’s secretion or if it was the oxygen around them.

Somehow the yellow and green substance over her body could make skin rust and corrode. She had to get samples of this and study it when she could get out of that gurney.

They bumped along the dirt road out of Brown Mountain and Scully realized Mulder was still clutching her fingers. They would be at a hospital within the hour, stripped, scrubbed and put into delicate clothing while they went through another decontamination procedure. If only she could say this was the first time.

Doctors at the Boone, North Carolina hospital had a team ready to handle their situation. Their clothes were cut from their bodies and they were whisked into a decontamination bay. Under the harsh stream of the showers, with the pressure suitable for an elephant, they were cleaned to rid their skin of the plant secretions.

Strong hands held her to stand as another set of hands applied a lemon-scented shampoo she recognized from hospital issue for pathologists to combat the smell of formaldehyde.

When Scully opened her eyes, Mulder was sitting naked in a chair four feet away with two men scrubbing him with soap and washcloths. A man in a Tyvek protection suit stood behind Mulder to wash his hair. Scully closed her eyes again and tried to live through the humiliation of being so exposed yet again.

“She’s done,” a man said through his own protection suit and they walked Scully toward the next level of the decontamination bay.

Thankfully, two women in scrubs and surgical masks were waiting for her with antibacterial ointments and clothing.

“Agent Scully,” the woman greeted as she was helped into her clothing. Scully could barely make out the name on her badge. Doctor T-something. “The worst part of your burns from the plant digestive secretion seems to be on your hands, neck and face.”

Scully lifted her hands into her eyeline and she saw the red marks on them. She might diagnose it as less than a first-degree burn or a harsh rash but she worried about her face nonetheless.

“We’re going to put this ointment and some gauze over the most affected areas,” the nurse told her as she helped Scully into her shirt.

The soft cotton felt like a sensory overload and it ached. She imagined the only thing that might feel good at this moment was nothing. The standard procedure for decontamination patients would be to keep them in the same space and monitor them carefully together to ensure the spores weren’t in their lungs. Antibiotics, chest X-rays and scopes would be administered. Pain medication might be given to help with discomfort and all on the FBI’s dime for sending them to investigate the disappearance of Wallace and Angela Schiff.

“Where’s my partner?” she asked with a scratchy voice.

“He’s just finishing up,” the nurse told Scully.

“You two have been through quite the ordeal,” Dr. T said in a quiet disapproval. “We’ll have to keep you here for forty-eight to seventy-two hours to ensure you’re not a danger to infection or to others.”

Scully nodded in understanding.

“We have some medications we want to give you for your discomfort,” Dr. T continued. “Paracetamol and a round of antibiotics to treat the spores.”

The nurse approached Scully with a blood drawing kit and tourniquet. “I’m going to take a few phial for tests.”

Scully nodded again and waited as four or five phials were taken. She lost count after two and she felt the paracetamol begin to whoosh through her system.

When she opened her eyes, Mulder was laying on a hospital bed four feet away from her with the same bandage over his arm from blood tests and in similar white cotton scrubs.

“You’re awake,” he noted.

Scully nodded. There must be a drip of paracetamol in her IV because the whooshing feeling returned. Whooshing feeling sounded funny in her head and she laughed.

“What’s funny?” Mulder asked. His voice sounded like sandpaper but like sexy sandpaper if that was ever a thing.

“I knew you weren’t dead,” Scully told him slowly. “I felt you were still alive. I felt it.”

Mulder smiled at her, pleased with the confession and emotional response from Scully. “How?”

“I felt it,” she repeated. “You can feel when someone you love dies.”

“Yeah?” he said as his face lit up and she realized what she said. “You love me?”

Scully’s cheeks flushed but the next words tumbled out of her mouth regardless of her mind telling her to stop. “Of course I love you, Mulder.”

“Ha!” he cried and pointed a lazy finger at her as though he had just got the confirmation and scientific proof she’d been denying him for seven years about their search for the truth. “Ha!”

“You said ‘ha’ already,” she mumbled.

“Well, you finally admitting how you feel deserves two ha’s, Scully,” Mulder gloated and she scowled at him. “Hey man, don’t blame me. You said it.”

“ _Man_?” she repeated and she rolled her eyes.

“No take-backs,” he said smugly. “You love me.”

“Yeah, well you love me,” she countered and she realized how childish it sounded but the logical arguments were somewhere above her body where a cloud of mushrooms were dancing. “Mulder aren’t the mushrooms pretty?”

“Yeah I do- wait, what?” he stopped and he made his way over from his bed to hers. “Are you okay, Scully?”

“The clouds are pretty,” she said simply.

“Nurse!” Mulder called and pressed the call button on the side of her bed. “Nurse!”

 

 

**x.**

Mulder was laying flat on his back with a bandage around his head in a dire condition. The medical team had all but left him there to potentially die. After the information was slipped to her, she dispatched a call to an emergency team to help get him to the nearest hospital. He needed to survive whatever torture was done to him.

“Mulder, you’ve got to get up. I don’t know how much time we have,” she pleaded as she began to cry. “You’ve got to get up, Mulder.”

She felt herself breaking and her heart on the verge. If he didn’t survive this, she didn’t know what she would do.

Tears fell down her face. “No one can do it but you, Mulder.”

She was pleading with a man who couldn’t respond but he had to hear her. She needed him. Of all things in her life, he had to stay with her. He was her constant.

“Mulder help me,” she pleaded. “Please, Mulder.”

Eventually and slowly, Mulder’s eyes opened.

“You help me…” his voice said weakly. She put her hands under his head and neck while his arm wrapped around her back tenderly to hold her close.

He allowed her to cry on his shoulder as her resolve broke and the floodgates opened.

“Scully,” he mumbled.

Scully looked down at him with the bright lights of the table underneath and she thought this looked more like a bad movie than a professional setting. Her blood boiled and a tear fell as she realized this was as close as it came to losing him.

“I’m right here,” she whispered.

“Scully…” he said and coughed a little. “Scully, I don’t love her.”

“What?” she asked as she stood up from the table to look at his face.

“Diana,” he said. “She wanted me to live with her in suburbia with kids and grow old and die without knowing the truth.”

“Mulder…”

“I lived it,” he insisted. “We got married. I had two boys. I did all the right things people are supposed to do. We grew old together. After I watched her die, you came to my bedside and called me a quitter.”

She tried not to smile. “That sounds like me.”

“I wouldn’t want that with her,” he said weakly. “I want _us_. You and me.”

Scully’s breath caught in her throat and she licked her upper lip. “Mulder…”

“Just say you love me too,” he insisted and his hand went to her waist to hold her closer to him. "Say it back when I say it."

Scully heard the sirens drawing closer. She called an ambulance there and she wouldn’t be able to ride to the hospital with Mulder to alleviate any worries they might have. Mulder would cry out for her when she wasn’t there and she would stress about his well-being as the paramedics drove him away.

“Scully,” he whispered. “I love you…”

“Mulder-” she started but the paramedics burst through the door.

The two men assessed him quickly and loaded him onto a gurney. The entire thing felt as though they were moving in slow motion but they were gone in an instant with the words of the hospital they were taking him to ringing in her ears.

“I love you too,” she whispered as she stood alone in the empty operating room. “I just don’t know what to do with it.”

It was the first time she verbalized how she felt about Mulder but at this point, with everything still between them, she didn’t think there was anything she could do or say that would progress it forward. She would just have to sit with this feeling and understand life would be at a standstill again. She would need Mulder to tell her what he wanted, without pain medication or drugs in his system, to know that he felt the same way.

 

**xi.**

Mulder and Scully sat in her car in the parkade of the Hartwell Psychiatric Hospital with an uneasy silence between them and the engine growling as it warmed up.

She could see him beginning different sentences in his head but he continually stopped himself. She could see the self-satisfied smile for kissing her but she saw the roadblock he was at now.

_Where do they go from here?_

The natural progression between two people after a kiss at midnight would naturally be to confirm feelings and move forward romantically. Mulder, being the least likely candidate to do things in a typical fashion, stalled and made her wonder if he regretted it.

“I don’t regret it,” he said suddenly. She leaned one ear and stuck her chin out toward him in that way she did that somehow made what he was saying more clear. “I don’t want you to think I’m sorry or…”

“If you can still read what’s going on up here, Mulder-” she started as she tapped at her temple.

He laughed. “No, I can’t… no.”

“Then how-”

“You have uncertainty written all over your face,” he told her and she pulled her chin back to nod once. “Do you… regret?”

Scully cocked her head to one side as she thought about his question. She shook her head slowly and looked into his eyes. “No.”

“I think you should know…” he started as he looked down at his arm that was in a sling. “I don’t have just… slight feelings, Scully. I love you.”

“Did the hospital give you any pain medication, Mulder?” she asked quiety.

Mulder held up the bottle of T3’s he put in the cupholder between them. “I haven’t taken them yet. I think I’m still reeling from seeing an actual zombie!”

“Oh,” she replied and nodded slowly.

“Scully? Did you hear me earlier?” he asked quietly and she nodded. “I mean it. I do love you. And just to clarify this isn’t like some friendship thing where I’m telling you you’re my best friend. And not like a sister.”

She smiled slowly at him and she could feel her gums sticking out. “Do you?”

“Why are you smiling at me like that?” he asked sounding slightly upset.

It was her turn to laugh.

“Mulder, you’ve been… you’re very chatty when you’re on pain medication over the years,” she said with a laugh and his brow furrowed. “I’ve just heard you say that more than once. All the times I’ve visited you in hospitals or even when you’ve had a drink or two, I had some idea but I never thought you meant it.”

Mulder’s jaw dropped. “Really?”

Scully nodded slowly. Her cheeks felt hot and she could feel that she was blushing but she didn’t look away.

“So last year…” Mulder started. Memories seemed to slowly come to him through drug addled fogginess to his own clear recollection in her car at that moment. “When you found me in the Bermuda Triangle and I said I loved you in my hospital bed…”

“And I said oh brother…” she continued for him.

“Yeah, that!” he exclaimed. “What was that about?”

“Mulder,” she admonished with a laugh. “You said it like it was the first time and I’m sorry to say… that really wasn’t.”

“Oh brother,” he sighed.

“Just a little,” she agreed sadly.

“Do you…” he started quietly. “Do you… feel that way? I mean, I thought after CGB Spender took me for his own experiments… and you came to my apartment?”

“When you called me your touchstone?” she reminded him with a slight smile.

“You touched my lips…” he told her and his uninjured hand brushed across his lips slightly. “I thought…”

Her heart was racing but now was the time to tell him how she felt. There was no going back at this point. 

“Mulder, I love you too,” she told him with a smile.

“Yeah?” he confirmed and she nodded. “Not like a brother?”

She shook her head. “Not like a brother.”

“Well holy shit!” he declared and they laughed again. “I’d kiss you right now but I don’t know how to maneuver myself with this thing.”

Scully looked at the sling around his shoulder and elbow then up to his face. “You’ll need to take it easy for at least two weeks.”

Mulder grinned. “Two weeks?”

She nodded and her cheeks felt hot again.

Mulder nodded in agreement. “Okay… I can wait…”

They held each others gaze for a moment and smiled again.

“I guess you’re driving me home?” Mulder guessed.

“Maybe you should stay at my place?” she offered. “I wouldn’t want you to strain your arm unnecessarily at home alone.”

Mulder reached over and pulled her hand to his lips. He kissed her fingers softly. “God bless you, Dana Scully.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that guy,” she said as took her hand back and put her car into reverse.

“I’ve seen zombies now, Scully,” he told her as she shifted the car into drive. “I think I could praise an omnipotent being who creates miracles and the universe for someone like you.”

“You’re funny,” she quipped.

“ _Now_ she notices,” he scoffed and she laughed again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Xii.**

Mulder lay sweating as his body fought to push away the toxins in his system from the snake bites. The rattlers had disappeared from the church and all that remained were the bodies of the victims of Reverend Mackey.

A hurt Revered O’Connor stood bleeding in the doorway, holding a white towel to his shoulder. He looked better than in the hospital where he almost died himself from the snake bites. He was breathing slowly and deeply as he watched Scully check Mulder’s wounds.

“He lives… He lives,” O’Connor repeated as though he was preaching to his thirsty congregation of believers. “You are righteous, Agent Mulder.”

Scully reached into her jacket pocket and called 911. “He’ll keep living when we get him to a hospital.”

She eyed the Reverend across from her and watched him sway on his feet. She pulled a pen from her pocket and used her mouth to remove the cap.

“You need medical attention too, Reverend,” she advised as she took the cap from her mouth. “Keep the pressure on your shoulder.”

Scully used her pen to circle the bites on Mulder’s skin she could see to measure possible swelling.

“I’m just in the eyes of the Lord,” O’Connor said as he sunk down to the floor. “I’ll live because he lives in me.”

“Save that for your sermon,” she muttered as the 911 operator answered to ask her emergency. “My name is Special Agent Dana Scully and I have an agent down.”

“What is your location, Agent Scully?” the operator asked with a slight southern twang to her voice.

“I’m at the Blessing Community Church,” Scully reported. “My partner and another man, Reverend O’Connor, have been bitten by snakes. I need two ambulances here with antivenin immediately.”

“Right away, Agent Scully,” the operator replied and she could hear the sounds of fingers punching a keyboard. “Is your partner breathing?”

“Scully,” Mulder attempted as his hands reached for her waist and under the back of her shirt. Too intimate of a touch for work but he was perspiring and obviously not thinking clearly. “Scully… Don’t let Mackey get away.”

“Yes, but he seems to be in shock,” Scully assessed. “Reverend O’Connor is bleeding badly. He has a gunshot wound to the upper right shoulder.”

“An ambulance is four minutes away,” the operator told her. “Hang tight.”

Scully hung up her phone and set it next to Mulder as she tried to check for bites. He hung on to her waist and pulled at her flesh under her jacket.

“Mulder,” she began. “Let go. I need to examine you.”

“He was smart inside,” Reverend O’Connor said slowly. “He was put to the test. He’s a righteous man.”

What pushed Scully away from the church towards the end of her time in medical school was the talk of completion one felt in being holy. During her affair with Daniel Waterston, she knew how many sins she was committing. Her faith in God didn’t waver but the faith she had in herself dissipated as she began to question if she was a good person anymore. She felt too ashamed to go to confession - in whole, it was a dark time for her.

Being amongst the purist and evangelist folks of Tennessee made her feel the distaste of judgement. The final judge would be God and not by a man who studied the book and lead a congregation to death.

“I’m only righteous because I take it from her,” Mulder whispered. “She’s the reason I’m a good person. She made me a whole person.”

“Mulder,” she warned.

O’Connor couldn’t be trusted for sharing anything personal with.

“God should make you a whole person,” O’Connor muttered with distaste.

“Then I guess God is a woman,” Mulder said with a laugh. “And I _love_ God.”

The paramedics arrived at that moment with stretchers in hand and medic bags ready. She pulled Mulder’s hands from under her jacket and instructed the medics on the wounds between Mulder and O’Connor.

As they were loading O’Connor into the back of the ambulance, he grabbed for Scully’s arm. His grip was bruising around her forearm and she struggled as he pulled her towards him.

“You need to repent for the sins of the body you commit with that man,” O’Connor breathed at her. “I know what you do, little lady.”

“Is this what you said to Gracie about Reverend Mackey?” she spat back at him. She pulled her arm away from his grasp and stepped back. “Get him out of here.”

Mulder was being rolled towards the second ambulance ten feet away. Scully hastily grabbed on to the metal railing above the back door to climb inside and ride with him to the hospital.

“God is a woman,” he muttered under the oxygen mask.

“Mulder settle down,” she warned.

“I am righteous!” he said as he tried to sit up on the gurney but thankfully he was strapped in. “God is a woman and I love her.”

She fingered the IV drip they had hooked up for him and looked down the line to the attachment input for drug administering that was dripping slightly. “Did you give him something for his pain already?”

“Small dose of paracetamol,” the paramedic said as he climbed in the back of the bus with her. “He’s a lightweight for such a big guy.”

Scully nodded and held on to the handrail as the ambulance began to drive towards the hospital. “He’s chatty but he’ll fall asleep soon.”

The paramedic, Jones, was actually one in the same she saw earlier when she took Gracie O’Connor in. “We’re seeing a lot of you today.”

“Hopefully this is the last of it,” she replied. “No offense.”

Jones waved his hand to forgive the comment and grinned at her. “The drug-induced confessionals must be a job hazard.”

“He’s never called me God before,” she said as Mulder began snoring softly from his gurney.

Jones smiled at her. “I’m going to have to write that one down. My wife would love that.”

“Maybe not if she’s a parishioner of the Church of God,” she replied quietly, thinking of the feverish dilettantes under Reverend O’Connor. “They don’t seem to have much for a sense of humour about the identity of God.”

“We’re Presbyterian,” Jones replied. “We wear khakis and sneakers to church. We like a laugh.”

Scully nodded in understanding. “Then I guess the line might work.”

Jones gave Scully a more studying appraisal. “I think it worked for you.”

She cursed her flushed cheeks and gave the paramedic a warning look. The rest of the ride to the hospital was spent in silence.

 

**Xiii.**

She arrived to work four hours after she left Mulder’s apartment with the memories of their acrobatics still fresh in her mind. She had taken her time in the shower as she replayed the events from the night before. It wasn’t their first time and she hoped after telling Mulder her doubts that it hadn’t been their last.

She wasn’t known for taking off in the middle of the night after he had fallen asleep but they weren’t notorious for workday sleepovers. Up to that point, she had attempted to maintain some boundaries between work and romance. He had no problem intruding on her private life for work, including waking her up early to rush the lab results on a young woman who drowned in her own vomit but claimed it was a poltergeist.

Before his solo trip to England, things had felt slightly tense between them. She was frustrated with their work and he seemed to feel that way towards her. He wanted her to blindly believe in the cases he brought in and she wanted to stop jumping at every case like it was the next confirmation for extraterrestrial life.

At this point, she was grateful for any time they spent apart since the passion they shared in quiet moments of her bedroom seemed to overwhelm her. He made her feel everything all at once and the intensity of his presence in her bed now made for less quiet spaces. Dana Scully appreciated the noise and mess of Fox Mulder but she longed for solitude when she didn’t get enough of it.

Daniel reappearing in her life took her footing out from under her. He was there with certainty, answers and obvious need when she felt so off balance.

She had already been questioning aspects of her life with Mulder. It wasn’t her feelings she doubted or his but what was next for them? Another seven years in the basement chasing sneaky farmers with their rope and boards? There had to be an end game. Their future felt uncertain even with the closure Mulder found with his sister. He had so many answers but she was still left with questions.

Daniel was not the kind of man who left his future unknown. He had clear paths with the scientific community while Mulder fought against the patriarchy of the FBI ladder to stay huddled in the basement with his files.

It was seeing the possibility of her future with Daniel that she realized how much she had changed from the woman who would have wanted that. The pain and hurt their relationship caused to his family and the healing he needed to facilitate with his daughter was a deafening reminder that a life with him was the wrong choice.

“You’re early,” Mulder noted as Scully entered their office with a coffee tray in hand.

She looked at the clock near the window and set the cardboard tray on top of the only clear space on his desk. “Seven minutes earlier than my usual arrival time but I don’t see that as being noteworthy, Mulder.”

“I noted it,” Mulder said lightly as he took the coffee with the M on the side of the paper vest. He took a tentative sip from his cup before removing the lid to allow it to cool. Mulder appreciated his coffee at room temperature which she thought was strange but in character with the other quirks he had. “Thank you.”

She took a sip from her half-sweet mocha and licked the foam from her lips. “You’re welcome.”

He was silent as she took off her jacket, hung it in the corner and pulled files from her briefcase. It was as she was powering up her computer that he finally spoke.

“I was surprised you were gone when I woke up,” he said but she heard the tension in his voice.

Since their return to the basement, Mulder was convinced there were cameras and microphones in their light fixtures. After seeing bugs in their office supplies in the past, she accepted his paranoid conjectures as a possibility. He was so certain about this that he had them checked by the Lone Gunmen and while their search came up with nothing, he campaigned for their conversations about their extracurricular activities to stay out of the office. That suited Scully just fine since it kept their work and romance separate like she preferred.

“Mulder,” she began and glanced up to the light fixture over her head.

“I had the Gunmen do a sweep of the place over the weekend,” he told her as he crossed the office to sit on the edge of her desk. “It’s fine… Are we?”

She typed in her ID and password for her computer and then sat back in her chair to wait the five minutes for it to load up all the programming.

“I wanted to get a run in this morning and I needed my things to shower,” she explained as she folded her arms across her chest.

Mulder pursed his lips and nodded but he was less than convinced. “Oh.”

After the full discussion about Daniel, Scully felt unsure of herself and where they stood. Mulder had listened quietly but there was jealousy and frustration she got back from him. At the end of it, he seemed calm, happy and understanding but now she wasn’t so sure.

“Is there something else?” she asked.

He sighed. “I guess not.”

He began to move off the desk and she placed her hand on his thigh to stop him.

“Hey,” she said and wrapped her hand around the middle of his tie.

Ever astute, Mulder took the hint and leaned towards her as she sat up straighter so their lips could connect. It was risky, considering their environment, but she was willing to take a risk today. He pressed his mouth to hers and she opened her lips to taste the toffee nut syrup he liked on his tongue.

When she pulled back, she felt pink and eager for more. “I love you.”

His eyes widened and he smiled at her like she had just told him she had a little grey alien to keep as a house pet. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispered. Their eyes lingered on one another for a beat until her computer chimed it had loaded her programs. She put her hands on her keyboard, ready to type. “Now go over there and finish your report on the shortest trip to London ever so we can actually work on a case.”

Mulder attempted to fight his smile but he was beaming too much. “Bossy.”

“Just you wait,” she muttered with an innuendo to later activities.

“God is a woman,” Mulder said as he opened the file folder with his expense report in it. “Her name is Dana Scully. She blesses me so.”

She laughed. “Shut up.”

“God is a _bossy_ woman,” he almost sang and took a sip of his coffee. The phone on his desk rang and Mulder answered it. “Mulder.”

She watched him twist his paper cup across the desk and it squeaked against the table top. When he hung up, he placed the lid on his paper cup and grabbed his jacket.

“Skinner wants to see us,” he told her.

“You better wipe the lipstick off your mouth before then,” she said before taking another sip of her coffee. It would be cold when they got back and a waste of ten dollars.

Mulder licked his lip. “Yeah?”

She took a tissue from the small box on her desk and wiped it across his lips. “Yeah.”

He took the Kleenex from her fingers then kissed the inside of her wrist. “Let’s go G-woman.”

She felt all a-tingle and straightened her spine as an attempt to will it to calm before walking into her boss’s office. Mulder placed a hand on her lower back as they approached the elevator doors.

“You think I’m in trouble?” he asked as he pushed the up arrow button.

“You could eat the cost of the trip and tell him you went to check up on old flames,” Scully mused.

“Is that a dig about fire and Phoebe?” he scoffed and she shrugged. “My exes don’t tend to move across the country or an ocean for me.”

“Touche,” she replied and he gave her a squeeze. There was a beat of silence as they waited for the elevator. “Mulder-”

“I’m not mad,” he cut her off and she raised her eyebrows in question. “Last night…. I know I didn’t react to you sharing about Daniel very well immediately but I’m not mad.”

She licked her lower lip nervously and nodded slowly. “Why not?”

The elevator doors opened and Mulder leaned inside to press a button to send it away. When he stood in front of her, he rubbed a hand down his face and took a breath.

“You shared a lot with me - emotionally. Generally that isn’t very easy for you Scully and I am giving you big points for it,” he told her. “It doesn’t feel good to know you were contemplating life with Daniel or questioning how things would have turned out.”

“But-” she started to defend herself.

“But you also theorized a possibility for one path, one choice and all the others were wrong,” he finished.

“I did say that,” she replied and knew that her statement meant no matter what in life, she was meant to be there with Mulder. “And I meant it.”

“The weight of that statement hit me pretty hard,” he said. “I mean, for all you’ve lost, you were meant to be in the basement and looking for aliens? From a scientist, that’s a _big_ statement.”

“I was trying more to say that I was meant to be with _you_ ,” she replied. “The aliens too but with you.”

He grinned again and reached his hand out to rub up and down her arm. “I know. I just like hearing you say that part.”  
  
“I question my life sometimes and where we’re going,” he told her. “I don’t know where it’s going to lead us but I know we’ll be-”

“Together,” she said in unison with him.

“Together,” he repeated with a full smile.

“Next time… just tell me if there’s something making you doubt me or us,” he requested softly. “I can argue a much better case without my head in my ass as I lecture you about crop circles.”  
  
That made her laugh.

Scully reached with her free hand to push the up button. “Okay.”

Mulder nodded once. “Okay.”

 

**Xiv.**

He had been inside of her just hours ago, pumping in and out furiously with intensity, whispering her name as she held on to his shoulders for dear life. She had come already three times and she was holding out for him. She didn’t have one left in her and she told him he could let go but he seemed to be pushing for some kind of record.

“It’s okay,” she assured him as he closed his eyes.

He had to be sore. They were going on over an hour but he kept pushing into her. They had begun when he took her from behind, fierce and hard and she came almost immediately when his finger found her bundle of nerves at her centre. He pulled back and moved her into his lap to come up from underneath her so they could move up and down in unison.

As the second orgasm washed over her body and she felt the tingling sensations disburse, he pushed her onto her side to move against her so they formed an X across his mattress.

She worried they were going to get a complaint from the super for all the noise they were making but she couldn’t stop herself. He was kissing her breasts as he moved on top of her. Before she could get comfortable, he flipped her onto her back as she felt the power and strength of being pliable in his hands while wrapped in his bed sheets. He spread her legs wide as he held her thighs under her knees and rocked against her.

“Mulder,” she whispered.

She didn’t want to remind him they had work that day. Maybe he was stalling going into the office after their side trip to Oregon. If her body was how he was distracting himself, she was more than happy to comply. But she still needed to go home and shower before work. This was an impromptu sleepover she hadn’t packed for. There were some items there she could use but it felt strange to spend the day at the office with Mulder’s Irish Spring soap lingering under her clothes. She needed the routine of her own space.

Mulder called it a funny quirk of hers and offered to stay at her place more often. She had agreed but they still somehow ended up at his place half the time. Maybe it was all the fantasies he wanted to act out on his leather couch and on his kitchen floor with the fish ignoring their activities.

“ _Scully_ ,” he said in reverence but his voice was like gravel in his throat.

Her voice was sore too but that happened from a lot of calling out to God for the amazing sex you were having.

“I love you,” he panted as he pushed inside of her one last time.

His hands released her legs and he moved his forearms underneath her arms to encourage a hug as he breathed in and out slowly against her neck.

“Say it back,” he reminded her.

It broke her heart he had to ask.

“Of course I love you,” she assured him.

“No, just say it back,” he said as he pulled his head up to look her in the eye. “ _Say it_.”

“I love you,” she said quietly but firmly.

He kissed her lips and she tasted herself there. The third time she came was when he told her of his urgent need to taste her and she had flipped her body around to take him into her mouth as he treated her sex with the same enthusiasm.

He kissed down her jaw and pulled out of her carefully. She would be sore to walk or sit down the rest of the day but that was the price happily paid for this kind of ecstasy.

“Do I not say it enough for you?” she asked as she reached for the Kleenex on Mulder’s bedside.

He came out of the bathroom and held his hand out for the soiled tissues to dispose of. He was a gentleman in many ways and one being that he tried to help clean up after their mutually formed mess where and how he could.

“You tell me in other ways, Scully,” he said as she walked towards the bathroom to clean herself up.

He entered the room when he heard the toilet flush and turned the shower on to start his morning routine. Mulder’s water pressure was less than great but it took about four minutes before it was warm enough for a suitable shower.

“How?” she asked from the bedroom where she knew her underwear would be.

It wasn’t. She looked in the usual places, the top of the headboard, at the end of the bed and around the corners of the bedsheets.

“Where are my panties?” she called to him.

Mulder exited the bathroom with his toothbrush in his mouth, his half-swollen cock lazily pointing at her and her panties in hand.

“I threw them over my shoulder this morning,” he said as he brushed and mimicked the motion of tossing the panties with his free hand.

She crossed the bedroom to take them from him. “Thanks.”

“You kept putting them back on last night,” he said and turned to the sink to spit. He watched her pull them up her waist and he frowned obviously. “Just not as fun to look at but still fun.”

She shook her head with a smile. “Did you hide my bra too?”

“You’re really good at saying I love you,” he told her as he crossed the room to pick up her bra from under her pile of wrinkled clothing. “You look out for me. That’s more than my parents did.”

“I’ll try to say it more,” she offered but even that sounded hard to do.

She would try for him to be more expressive but he knew what he was getting into when they started this whole thing together. Emotional exposure in the past usually left her feeling hurt or scared. It wasn’t Mulder’s style to ignore her feelings but this wasn’t about him. It was about her.

“I appreciate that you’re going to try,” he said as he watched her pull on the T-shirt she wore over to his place the previous night.

Scully used to think it was sexy to have someone watch you undress but there was something sexy about the way Mulder watched her put on her clothing. With him, everything in private felt sexy but that’s because it still felt new. It had been nine months and she really wasn’t sure when that would wear off.

Now, she stood in the hallway outside of Skinner’s office with too much overwhelming her about what was to come. This was tangible proof for their office to keep its place at the FBI but there was so much more going on. Abductees were being taken and he was vowing to keep her safe.

Mulder said I love you in ways that weren’t just ‘I love you’ too.

“I won’t let you go alone,” she said as he held on to her.

“Frohike, Langly and Byers-”

“No,” she interrupted. “You have to take Skinner with you. You need someone credible.”

“Keep looking into the science,” he said as he rubbed her back. “I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon before anyone can haul me in for disobeying a direct order.”

She pushed her face into his neck and breathed in the Irish Spring soap on his skin. “I love you.”

“I’ll be fine,” he assured her with a small laugh.

“Say it back,” she whispered feeling an overwhelming sensation of vulnerability.

She needed to see a doctor about her hormones and dizzy spells once they wrapped their case. This was unlike her.

“I love you,” he told her and kissed her hair.

She didn’t know that would be the last time to hear those words from him that calendar year.

  
**Xv.**

She had kept Mulder’s apartment rented with the money inherited from his family trust. After he was missing for over a week, Scully began going by there on Sundays after mass to clean it. At first, it was to pick up the laundry, clean out the fridge and feed the fish. The next time she went, she tried to find his scent on his pillow and cried for an hour when it had faded. After that, she went by to dust, vacuum and mop. She organized the papers, files and magazines that were on monthly subscriptions and made difficult phone calls to places to let them know Fox Mulder would be suspending his account.

After he died, she kept it out of pure stubbornness. Her mother pleaded with her to let it go, to hire a service to take care of the space but she continued to go as her belly grew. It would kick and squirm when she took a rest on his couch and she would talk to the child she made with Mulder, possibly on that couch. She couldn’t be sure because around the date of conception there was a lot of activity between them.

Now he stood across that same room from her, physically and emotionally as inaccessible as he could be from her.

“Mulder-” she started. “I don’t know if you’ll ever understand what it was like. First learning of your abduction… and then searching for you and finding you dead. And now to have you back, and uh…”

Her voice broke.

“Well, you act like you’re surprised,” he said with a laugh.

As though the man who lived through everything wouldn’t rise like Lazarus or Jesus. She was sure he would make a biblical joke but she would be keen to correct him that Jesus was only dead for three days and not six months.

The pregnancy had made her more emotional than she was used to but this wasn’t just a Pampers commercial or her nephew Matthew asking to kiss the baby. Those were small teary eyed moments of sweetness while this was different. She had relief and happiness but she felt so unsure how he felt. He almost seemed angry.

“I prayed _a lot_ ,” she admitted to him at the risk of his eye rolling for her desire to have a miracle. “And my prayers have been answered.”

“In more ways than one,” he said as he gestured towards her stomach.

Scully looked down at the baby that had kicked a few times on the drive over but was thankfully still right now. “Yeah.”

“I’m happy for you,” he replied but she didn’t entirely believe it. “I think I know… how much that means to you.”

It was supposed to mean something to them, not just her alone. His eyes kept looking from her stomach to the floor as though he had no part in it. His detachment upset her and she took another calming breath.

“Mulder,” she started.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to be cold or ungrateful. I just… I have no idea where I fit in. Right now. I just, uh… I’m having a little trouble processing… everything.”

He looked to the side as he took in more of his surroundings. He looked lost and uncomfortable.

“Do you want to be alone?” she asked as she fidgeted with the edges of her jacket sleeves. “I can go.”

She offered it genuinely but hoped he would say no. He said nothing.

“Okay,” she said and took forty dollars out of her pocket. “I haven’t been able to get your bank accounts reactivated yet. It takes twenty-four hours and you might remember I was at the hospital a lot since we found you. If you want to order take out, that should get you to tomorrow. I’ll come by in the morning to take you into the bank.”

“Scully,” he started.

“I need to use the bathroom before I get in the car,” she cut him off. She took the keys out from her other pocket and avoided his eyes.

Mulder sat on the couch heavily as she disappeared into the bathroom. She took calming breaths as she closed the door behind her. The walls of Hegal Place were not sound proof enough to prevent him from hearing her cry and she didn’t want him to feel guilted into being nice to her.

When she exited the bathroom, he was sitting on the edge of the couch with his knees bouncing.

“I’ll come by tomorrow to bring you into work,” Scully told him. “I’ll see you.”

Mulder stood up from the couch and reached out to her. “Wait.”

She turned to him and crossed her arms under her breasts over her stomach as she pulled back from him. She wouldn’t be swayed by a touch right now.

“I’m not sure what to make of the baby because-”

“It’s your baby,” she cut him off. “Not _the_ baby or _my_ baby. It’s _ours_.”

Mulder opened his mouth to protest.

“I had an amnio done when I was eight weeks. I also ran DNA tests to determine that I wasn’t implanted with an alien fetus-”

“What? Back up.”

“I saw… I saw a woman give birth to a baby and it looked like an alien fetus that we saw when Deep Throat was shot,” she told him. “I was scared that when I was with the smoking man and I was missing time that he had done something-”

“Had he?” Mulder said stepping closer to her with his fist clenched.

“ _No_ ,” she said and took a step back. “No. The dates don’t match up.”

Mulder ran his hands down his scarred cheeks and sat down heavily on the couch again with a sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

“It’s from… you know when we watched Caddy Shack?” she asked him and he nodded. “Then, I think.”

She watched his face as he processed the information she had given him. “Oh… I wasn’t sure…”

“I’m due in June,” she replied as she shifted her feet. “It’s ours. You and me.”

“Like a million to one shot, huh?” he said with pride and she grinned reluctantly.

“More like fifty million to one,” she said with a sigh. “It was well after the in vitro attempts…”

Mulder looked down at his jeans and rubbed his hands together. “This is the kind of thing I don’t know how to process, Scully.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You had the last seven months to realize you were pregnant-”

“I also had to try to find you, keep the X-files open, bury and mourn you,” she cut him off acerbically. "It's been hell for me these last few months."

“Fair enough,” he said and held up his hands in defense. “And I wanted to help you do this but I just… it’s strange to see it all at once.”

Scully ran a hand along the curve of her belly. “Is it strange?”

He made a face that showed his hesitation to agree with her choice of words but she smiled anyway.

“Yeah,” he said as they both looked at her stomach with wonder. “I was curious what you’d look like when you asked me to help…but this is weird. And I don’t feel like myself.”

“You keep saying that,” she snapped. The hormones could make her turn on a dime and she fought those outbursts as much as she could. She took a calming breath and sighed. “It’s my own body and sometimes I can’t believe it but then the baby kicks or moves and it feels more real. This isn’t something I can take off to help you get used to this.”

He was watching her intently and she could see his perception shift. “I want to reiterate that while I feel lost with everything and without some pain medication to prompt this for you to doubt my sincerity of it later, you should probably know something, Scully.”

He stood up from the couch and approached her as she swallowed heavily. She had a feeling she knew what was coming but she didn’t want to get her hopes up. “What is it, Mulder?”

“I love you,” he told her as his hand slid down her side to rest on her hip. It was a safe place to touch her, away from where the baby was between them and familiar at the same time. It angered her too. “I’m just not sure how to handle all this right now… I don’t know how I’m feeling…”

“I think you do,” she replied as she pushed his hands off of her in frustration.

It had been enough of her for the day and she waved a hand at him before walking out his apartment door. It would be easier to allow him to process his thoughts alone while she tried to pick up the pieces from her dignity. It was one thing to be alone and pregnant because your lover had died but it was certainly another to be rejected by him after coming back from the dead.

She was halfway down the hallway when he walked out after her.

“You’re right,” he called. “I feel angry. ”

Scully stopped in her tracks but didn’t turn. “At _me_?”

“No,” he replied quickly and she could feel the heat of his body just a foot away from her now. His hand wrapped around her wrist lightly and she turned to him slowly. “I feel displaced being here. I don’t feel like myself. I guess I need to know that I have a place or a purpose aside from how I feel about you and where I fit in with…”

He waved his free hand to her stomach and she arched her eyebrow.

“It’s a baby, Mulder. I thought we agreed before-”

“I know,” he replied quickly. “It’s just that now it’s throwing me off.”

This was part of what scared her when she asked Mulder to help her have a baby. He would always be searching for answers, looking to uncover truths and push the envelope. He had literally lost his life on this quest for truth and no one asked him if he was ready to do so.

All these searches into the darkness weren’t suitable for a family and not something she wanted to battle in her personal life anymore. The sacrifices for work would be her own and she was ready to leave it behind if necessary for a child.

She winced and Mulder reached out for her. “What?”

“Right there,” she said as she pushed on her side where the little being inside her was pressing a knee against her kidney and a foot towards her hip. “The baby kicks when I stop moving around.”

Mulder watched her hand push against the bulge.

There was a movement sharply inside and she felt another kick towards her belly button. “ _Oh_!”

“Again?” he asked her and she nodded. He leaned closer to her stomach. “None of that.”

“I don’t think the baby recognizes you as an authority figure yet, Mulder,” she said as she pushed on her lower back to try to disburse the weight and pressure. “I have eight weeks to go and I can’t get out of bed without a struggle, by the way. So don’t laugh at me if I ask you for help out of a chair.”

He smiled at her even though she was glaring at him. “I missed you.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “How do you think I felt?”

“This is just about my feelings right now,” he teased. “Don’t be selfish.”

They laughed quietly and she cried out as the baby kicked again.

Mulder tentatively put his hand on her stomach and felt the sharp kicks of their child wiggling inside her. “ _Holy shit_.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. She took his hand and moved it higher where the baby’s bottom could be felt. “Right there?”

He nodded.

“That’s the bum.” She moved his hand down the baby’s spine that was pushing against her skin. “Did you feel that?”

“That’s _all_ the baby?” he asked.

“It’s not me,” she replied simply.

“Can I see?” he asked as he pulled on the bottom of her sweater and she placed a hand to stop him. “No?”

“We’re in your hallway… And you just got out of the hospital…” she said with her voice trailing off. She felt shy about her body and unsure with everything he had just told her. “No…”

“Another time?” he asked and there was more laden in his words than just wanting to see her skin stretched across her swollen womb.

“I worry the mere sight of my robust figure without a few layers between us might not be good for your health,” she said self deprecatingly.

“You and the doctor said I was in perfect health,” he reminded her. He made a disappointed face. “It was worth a shot.”

“We can put in the request for you to get back to work tomorrow and take it from there,” she suggested. “Take it slow.”

He took the hand closest to him and kissed her wrist. “Slow.”

He smiled at her and his hand reached out for her stomach again to palm it as he would a basketball. She missed his touch so much it made her ache for him but this wasn’t the time for that.

“So are you really going to ditch me to eat alone?” he asked.

She rubbed her hand down the side of her stomach. “I might be convinced to stay but just for dinner.”

He kissed her cheek. “I’ll go get the phone book.”

 


	4. Chapter 4

**XVI.**

“I love you,” he whispered as they lay in the quiet of a dingy motel room on the border of New Mexico and Colorado.

She wondered if he expected her to be sleeping at the time but she opened her eyes to see his profile in the dark. “I love you too.”

“I don’t think I’ve said it enough since I left…” his voice trailed off and she could hear him thinking about all the things that happened since that time.

She wondered if he would ask her to say it back or if he wouldn’t demand it with the fear she wouldn’t return the sentiment. She just committed a felony by helping a prisoner escape and harbouring him in that motel room. How could she not?

Then she remembered she was dealing with a man with extreme abandonment issues and she let out a long breath.

“I love you,” she said as she reached out to him.

His skin was hot even though he was laying closer to the air conditioning unit and he had only his boxers on. “I wish you didn’t sometimes.”

Scully understood what he was saying, even though it was hurtful. “It wouldn’t be a better life if I had never met you, Mulder. It would be less interesting and I would be another oblivious person to the crimes of our government. I might be safer but that would be a lie. You woke me up to the reality of our world and made me whole.”

Mulder turned to face her in the bed, although she wasn’t sure he could see her. She reached above her to turn on the light at the headboard. He looked at her with hazy eyes that tried to adjust to the brightness of the yellow bulb.

“You should be having your tenth kid right now and running a successful medical office,” Mulder told her as he pulled the sheet down from her nearly-naked form. It was too hot to sleep in clothing so she opted for just the pink panties she had on earlier. “You should be married to someone who your family likes and that didn’t get your sister shot-”

“I love _you_ ,” she cut him off.

“In spite of the global conspiracy, the family history of being involved with syndicates that are trying to poison the inhabitants of their own planet and my incessant need to right?” he asked dryly.

His eyes weren’t searching her face for answers. He was taking in the sight of her body that he had missed so much he made up for his absence twice already. There was a slight tenting under his boxers and she arched her eyebrow.

Mulder’s eyes looked up from her breasts and he grinned at her. “We’ve missed you.”

“Who is _we_?” she clarified.

Mulder pulled his half-hardened member out of his boxers. “Me and him.”

Scully chuffed a laugh. It had been a while since she had been subject to that side of him. Mulder could be crude and forward but his eyes contained a worry that he might be rejected.

“You want to go for number three?” she asked him as he gave himself a lazy stroke.

Mulder’s eyes moved down to her breasts and then back up to her face. “Yeah.”

Scully rolled over onto her back and looked up at the crack in the ceiling of their one-floor motel with dingy wallpaper and threadbare carpet.

“What’s wrong, Dana?” he asked as he moved towards her on the queen sized bed.

She looked over to him. “Do you forgive me for what I did?”

“What?” he asked as his eyes widened. “I don’t blame you.”

“But-”

“I blame myself,” he said.

Her chin clenched. “I asked you to leave. I couldn’t protect him on my own and I gave him-”

“Dana,” he cut her off and pulled her towards him in an embrace with his desire still evident between their bodies. “Scully, no… _No_ …. Don’t do that to yourself.”

Scully sighed into the familiar scent of his body and wrapped her arms under his to hug him close. They were quiet for a moment as they held each other on the bed and he wrapped his leg over her hip to pull her closer.

“I’m not much fun,” she whispered.

Mulder looked down at her as she tilted her head up. “This is probably the most fun I’ve had in six months.”

She searched his eyes and her tongue darted out to lick her lower lip nervously. His eyes flickered down to her mouth and she felt him twitch between them.

“Help me forget for a little while,” she pleaded.

“As long as you like,” he agreed. Mulder rolled her onto her back and pulled her underneath him. His mouth moved to her cheek and he pressed his lips near her ear as he rocked against her hips. “One day we might forgive ourselves, Scully.”

He reached between them to pull her panties aside as he began to push inside her. She gasped at the intrusion but she welcomed it. He helped her forget as much as he could with the solace of his body over hers.

At every thrust, he told her he loved her and she didn’t have to be prompted to say it back once that night.

 

**XVII.**

She was signing the papers for the property when the text came in from the burner phone that he had picked up at their last outing to Target.

_“All done?”_

He had been holed up in a hotel room in Virginia for three weeks, going stir crazy every time she left without him. They were too close to law enforcement offices that might still have his face on their most wanted lists. The threat of being a wanted man outweighed the need for fresh air. Freedom could wait.

Scully glanced up at the lawyer as she signed her papers with a nervous smile and flipped her phone over to hide the screen.

“That’s it?” she asked.

Mindy Weir grinned at Scully. “That’s it. You are now the proud owner of a very ordinary piece of property and the unremarkable house that sits on it. No offence.”

“Thank you,” Scully said and sighed.

“Aren’t you going to text him back?” Mindy asked.

“Who?” Scully asked with feigned innocence.

Mindy narrowed her eyes at Scully. “I’m your lawyer under a retainer since you paid me four weeks ago to help you get some of your assets out of holding. If you want to talk to me about anything, I’m here.”

Scully looked at the door that was slightly ajar in Mindy’s office and the woman crossed the space to close it. This woman was good.

“Dana?” Mindy prompted as she sat down next to her.

“I want to try to expunge the record of a man I know to be innocent of the crimes he was accused of committing in 2002,” Scully told her.

“How do you know he was innocent and what was the crime?” Mindy asked. “I should let you know that I don’t usually handle criminal cases but I would be happy to help any way I can.”

“He was accused of murder on a military base but the body was never examined by an outside member of the military,” Scully explained quietly. “He’s… I know he’s innocent because I know the man well.”

“Why don’t you give me the details and I’ll look into what I can,” Mindy coaxed.

“It’s not mainstream and it wouldn’t be safe-”

“I’m a single East Indian woman living alone in Washington D.C. while in my thirties,” Mindy countered.

Scully chuffed a laugh and it had probably been a while since she had done that. “That’s not the kind of danger I’m talking about.”

Mindy frowned as she thought about what Scully told her. She walked back over to her desk and pulled out a pad of paper and a pen. “I want you to write down what you feel comfortable sharing with me while I try to assure you that this would not be the most dangerous case I’ve ever handled.”

It took her a moment but then she remembered that Mindy Weir had come by recommendation from Walter Skinner. She took the paper and pen from Mindy to begin writing when her phone buzzed again.

“Get it,” Mindy urged her. “Tell him the good news.”

Scully picked up the phone and read the four text messages missed from Mulder. Having a cell phone for the first time in two years meant extra communication from him.

_“All done?”_   
_“Are you still out?”_   
_“Scully?”_   
_“Scullaaaaaaay!”_

The last one made her chuckled and she texted back, _“All done. Signed and sealed. Going to pick up keys in a minute.”_

_“Yee_ haw _,”_ he replied.

_“We’re not in the south anymore,”_ she texted back and put the phone down. “Sorry about that.”

It was a big step and a risk for them to purchase a property and put down roots. They wanted to be closer to Maggie again and they missed normality. He had convinced her that she should get back to working in a hospital instead of free clinics as a substitute doctor. She believed it would be safe because she wanted to believe that it would be okay for them.

That afternoon, she had her second interview with the Chief of Staff and someone named Father Ybarra. Our Lady of Sorrows was a forty-five-minute drive from the property that Scully just purchased but far enough away from the city limits that they wouldn’t be bothered by patrol cops possibly sighting Mulder on the property.

“I hope I can help you and your friend get out of this situation,” Mindy began. “As your lawyer, I would have to advise you from doing anything illegal such as harbouring a fugitive but after speaking with Walter about you, I know that you won’t be deterred from whatever it is you are doing.”

Scully looked up from her pen and paper to the woman across from her. “I love him and I can’t imagine a life without him.”

“I know the feeling,” Mindy sighed knowingly and Scully looked at her questioningly. “Don’t worry about it. I will do my best to look into the charges.”

“What will you say if they ask-”

“I’m a lawyer looking into a family matter,” Mindy cut her off. “Attorney-Client privilege is sacred in the United States.”

“But he didn’t-”

“Get your friend to send me five bucks,” Mindy replied with a dismissive wave of her hand.

Scully nodded and handed over a carefully worded summary of what had transpired in 2001-2002. “Thank you for rushing everything on the house.”

“You were one of my easier clients,” she replied with a wink. “I’ll be in touch about this case. Be careful out there.”

“I will,” Scully replied.

It was another hour before she was picking up Mulder from the motel outside of Richmond with the keys to their property. When she arrived, Mulder had packed their bags and was waiting on the bed with an anxious knee jumping to an erratic beat.

“You get them?” he asked.

Scully held up the set of keys that were to be Mulder’s even though the likelihood of him leaving the property would be small. Scully had picked up a small grey alien keychain for him when they were in Roswell New Mexico but held on to it since then. She tossed him the key to the front door with the shining grey charm catching the light of the sun behind her.

Mulder caught the keys and laughed out loud. “Where did you get this?”

“When we lived in Roswell for those three weeks,” Scully told him with a grin.

“You kept this hidden for two years?” he asked as he stared at the keychain in his palm. “What if we never found a place and settled down?”

“I never lost hope, Mulder,” she replied with a grin as she approached him.

Mulder stood up off the bed and wrapped her in a tight embrace. He pressed his mouth into her hair and said quietly, “I love you.”

Scully nodded into his chest as he held her.

“Say it back,” he whispered so softly she thought she imagined it.

She didn’t. He was still needy for affirmations of her love for him, even after all this time.

“I love you,” she told him.

Mulder took her head in his hands and kissed her forehead down to her lips. “Thank you.”

“I wouldn’t change a day with you,” she said honestly.

There was a look of doubt in his eyes but it was the truth. As far as they had strayed from the path of where they wanted to be when they crossed the line from partners to lovers, they had remained together through it all. Mulder kissed her softly and she felt the reassurance inside that she was continuing to make the right choice.

“Oh and you need to send Mindy Weir a five dollar bill in the mail,” Scully told him.

Mulder nodded. “Sure thing. I just need to borrow five bucks.”

Scully pulled a five dollar bill out of her purse. “Freeloader.”

“ _Skeptic._ ”

“ _Sucker._ ”

“You’re making me hard, Scully,” he teased but it could very well be true. It didn’t take much for him sometimes.

She pushed on his chest and he laughed as she walked away from him. “Get those gangly legs moving.”

“Bossy,” he muttered behind her.

 

**XVIII.**

They had just been lying in bed, cursing God and the world for all its cruelties as Mulder’s scratchy beard had prevented what could have been a good nightcap after a long day. Mulder’s body knew how to distract hers from the outside world that plagued on her mind at night.

The fleeting thought in her brain mentioned the Acepromazine and the radiation treatment drug in the system of the severed arm. Mulder’s mind quickly made connections through the case and he was out of bed before she could argue for him to get some sleep.

He turned the lights on in the bathroom over the sink and began applying shaving cream over his freshly dampened face. He was arguing for the validity of Father Joe’s visions when Dakota Whitney called for them.

“The same source,” Whitney said through the phone with the sound of the highway and Father Joe mumbling in the background. “New news.”

Scully took down the information and promised they would be ready to drive out to the site within the hour. Mulder began looking around the bedroom when she hung up the phone and she put her hands on her hips.

“What are you doing?” she asked him with a quizzical gaze.

Mulder gestured to his bare chest and pyjama pants. “I can’t go in this.”

“No,” she shook her head. Scully took him by his hand into the bathroom. “Your face?”

He shook his head self-deprecatingly and picked up the razor with a shaking hand. He took one swipe across his cheek and winced. “ _Shit_.”

Scully took the razor from him and ran the blade under water. “If you’re not up to this-”

“I was up for a lot more,” he said with definite innuendo and she pursed her lips as she took the razor down his cheek. She held his chin with two fingers and pulled down repeatedly until she had cleaned his face. He pulled his mouth tight as she worked her steady hand around his lips and nose.

As she examined his face and took the warm washcloth over his now smooth skin, he looked at her in a way she recognized from years before. There was clarity in his eyes and a hunger to prove himself out there in the field. She put a piece of tissue on his cheek to stop the bleeding from where he had cut himself earlier and he grinned at her.

“I love you,” he said as she wiped the shaving cream off his chest.

She wasn’t sure why but the admission of love from him made her cheeks flush. It had been a while since he had said the words outside of a passionate moment and she felt as though the admission was genuine.

“Don’t say the thing,” he whispered, meaning the ‘oh brother’ she once uttered as a disgruntled woman who had heard the admission under induced circumstances too often. “Just say it back.”

“I love you,” she replied quietly as she gazed back into the green eyes that had seen every part of her. She saw some doubt in his eyes so she added, “Truly. I still do.”

Mulder wrapped her in an embrace and pushed her against the doorway of the bathroom. It took only moments of their embrace before he shed her of her nightclothes and took her body to appease the demons that he wanted to fight away earlier in their bed.

It was only a few days later that he looked at her in the very hospital that started their undoing and wished her luck. He glibly shrugged with frustration that she wouldn’t follow him into the darkness to search for the monsters among them.

How could he understand how hard it was for her when the way they met and fell in love was among that darkness? She had always felt like he was the light inside of it with her but he wrapped himself up so tightly in the crimes and theories to find them that he didn’t see what it did to both of them. He always had her to save him but who would save her? She couldn’t be the lifeline to sanity and normality for the rest of her life. He didn’t understand why not and she couldn’t convince him how much room it would take up in their lives. He didn’t care.

He would choose the work over her when he chose to walk away. That all but crushed her but at least she had her work to find some solace in. It wasn’t much but at least she had her work.

The FBI brought Dakota Whitney’s body and Monica Bannon’s remains to the morgue at Our Lady of Sorrows while she slept in an on-call room. When he showed up, she could see he didn’t have anyone to confide in. Out of habit, she reached out for him. Her fingers brushed his palm and he let her hold on to him for a moment before he pulled away. He was still in pursuit of a truth and wouldn’t be swayed by her touch.

It felt like their early partnership when he would pull away from her hands as she tried to stop him from ruining a crime scene in the search for a body of someone who resembled his sister. He was back to being that man who needed to find answers over knowing that not all the answers were there for him.

 

  
**XIX.**

Scully walked down the hallway of Our Lady of Sorrows with a fresh pair of scrubs on her weary frame. She had showered after the surgery on Cheryl Cunningham was completed. They saved her life with minimal complications but the surgery was hard for the team to complete. She would have scarring and tissue damage where she had the head of Franz Tomczeszyn attached to her but with therapy, she would recover.

This case took too many victims. Dakota Whitney and Monica Bannan would not go home to their families. In addition to the FBI agents lost, Mulder and Scully’s home had been torn apart and it hardly felt like it took much pressure.

As she reached the doorway to Mulder’s shared room, she overheard Mulder and Skinner talking.

“How did you find me?” Mulder asked groggily.

He was being treated for exposure, a minor head wound and some fractured ribs from the car accident. Scully had been kept informed of his status through the surgery and she informed them of Mulder’s reactions to morphine but it was after he was given the pain medication. By Scully’s estimation of his last dosage, he would be quite chatty with Skinner by now.

“Scully had a hunch,” Skinner answered. “Something about Proverbs?”

Mulder coughed quietly. “Scully doesn’t go on hunches unless they’re _religiously based_. It’s one of the best and worst things about her.”

He emphasized the word relgiously in a sarcastic tone and Scully felt her frustration with him bubble up as she stood outside the doorway listening to the two men speak. She felt like a snoop but if she walked in there now, he might be apt to tell her to leave his room. She couldn’t handle another rejection.

Skinner cleared his throat. “She heard the dogs barking and we followed it to where we found your nearly-frozen ass.”

“She did _what_?” Mulder questioned.

Skinner paused. “She took leaps that she wasn’t comfortable with but she made those connections to find you. Then she clocked that guy with a shovel with a swing I might expect from a major league hitter.”

“She’s got a really great right hook too,” Mulder said and she could picture a proud smile on his face. He sighed exaggeratedly. “I can’t _believe_ she followed those clues. She never likes to follow clues like that.”

“She did it for you,” Skinner reminded him. “I know you guys are having problems and I’m not exactly sure what happened-”

“She doesn’t believe me,” Mulder groaned.

“Believe what?” Skinner asked.

“She thinks these cases will be too much for me,” he explained but it sounded like whining. “I feel fine. I’m fine with it. Really, I’m fine and she doesn’t believe even after all this time. It’s so _infuriating_ but even in spite of that stubbornness of hers I can't help but love her, man.”

Scully was definitely sure she had not heard Mulder call anyone ‘man’ before and definitely not their boss. His morphine must have been rushing through his system by then.

“Mulder…” Skinner started slowly. “I’ve seen you at a low and dark point. This might not be too much for you but her reasoning adds up.”

“So what do I do?” he asked testily. “I told her I loved her.”

“I'm the last person to give relationship advice but... I would keep telling her that. Make sure she knows she’s more important than your work,” Skinner said. “I don’t know why after all these years she still loves you. You put her through hell more than not.”

A flush of embarrassment came across her cheeks that they were speaking of her like this. They had a relationship that wasn’t quite boss/employee anymore but not quite friends. Mulder didn’t have the social skills or the desire to have many of those.

“Hey, I’m a good guy,” Mulder protested and Skinner scoffed. “Usually.”

There was a pause and Scully could hear Mulder shifting in his bed.

“Do you really think she could do better?” Mulder asked quietly.

“Everyone does except her,” Skinner replied gruffly.

Mulder sighed. “Well, I told her we can’t be together so what does that make me? Am I helping her or hurting her?”

There was a sound of fabric shuffling and Scully glanced in to see Skinner sitting on the edge of Mulder’s bed near his feet. “I think it makes you an ass but we knew that.”

“I don’t want to be with anyone else,” Mulder muttered. “I just… want her to believe in me.”

“I think she’s done _nothing but_ believe in you,” Skinner replied as he stood up. “If you let her walk out of your life, you’re a bigger horse’s ass than I thought.”

Skinner stood up off the bed and Mulder looked towards the window. “So what now?”

“Maybe you should use some of the money coming your way and take her out of here for a bit,” Skinner suggested. “Someplace warm.”

“If she’ll go with me,” Mulder muttered and he laid his head back on his pillow to stare at the ceiling. “I need her. She’s the best part of me.”

“Then you might want to try to compromise with her, Mulder,” Skinner advised. He tapped Mulder’s feet with his gloves. “Come by the bureau on Monday and I’ll have some paperwork for you to sign regarding the wrongful charges.”

“Good talk, Skinman,” Mulder said.

“I told you not to call me that,” Skinner replied as he stood up.

Mulder nodded and Scully let out a breath she wasn’t sure she had been holding. Skinner exited Mulder’s room and looked down at Scully.

“What happens when the morphine wears off?” he asked as he pointed his thumb towards Mulder’s bed.

“He goes back to standing his ground,” she replied sadly.

Skinner shook his head. “You two deserve each other.”

 

  
**XX.**

The boat glided through the water and Mulder’s arms flexed with each pull of the oars. They were crossing a small inlet from Parrot Cay to Dellis Cay. The villa they chose at the Como had a mile-long beach and was surrounded by 1,000 unspoilt acres. It was out of the way from the other resorts and but not too far that a day trip to other parts of Turks and Caicos was impossible. The resort was lavish and quiet but nothing about Provo or the rest of the islands were hustle and bustle. This was the ultimate getaway.

Compared to the frustrated and gaunt man that had holed himself up in his office day in and day out, Mulder looked happier and healthier in the sun. He had trimmed his hair that had grown longer but only shaved every other day since they had arrived.

She sat in the canoe with a towel under her backside, leaning against the edge with her elbows propping her up. The break from work had been beneficial for her too.

Mulder had spoken with her in his office and asked her about what she believed. She admitted that the encouragement Father Joe gave her that snowy night led her to pursue the clues as Mulder might and it saved more than just his life. It led to the case being broken because she pushed from logic and science to see it as he did, as they always did, to find justice for the victims. It broke down a wall they had put up between each other - finding the common ground about what they both believed in.

“Don’t give up,” he said as they stood at her car.

He just wanted her to not give up on him or them. If anything, it was just the small plead she needed from him to stay. She hadn’t fully committed to the idea of a life without him in it.

After the surgery for Christian Fearon had improved the condition that Sandhoff’s disease had taken on the young boy, he smiled at her from his hospital bed and told her she needed to take a break. It was a wise comment for a boy who wasn’t even ten yet but she took his advice.

While Scully argued that there were better things to do with his recently released assets, Mulder countered that she foot the bill on everything the last six years as a free woman when he wasn’t working for cash under the table. Therefore, he could treat her to something extravagant and shut up about it.

She took that advice also.

“I love you,” he said as he pulled the oars through the water. His eyes were scanning the water as he moved their canoe down the inlet but he stopped to grin at her. “Scully?”

“I love you too,” she replied feeling her cheeks flush.

She hoped the sun would excuse it for heat but the breeze off the ocean to the water had kept her feeling cool. She wanted to brush off the saccharine moment with a sarcastic comment but it was just so nice to hear him admit it unprompted by head trauma or dire circumstance.

“I know…”Mulder began as their boat approached the shoreline. “I know you asked me to get involved to clear my name and I took it too far…”

“I should know better than that,” Scully said shaking her head. “I know you. You’re not someone who can sit on the sidelines.”

“Neither are you,” Mulder replied as the boat reached the sandy shore. He jumped out and pushed it onto the beach. “I’ve never seen you not want to help like that. Not only was that frustrating but that scared me too… You’re not a quitter.”

She felt embarrassed that she had been so on the fence with all of her input into the case. She wanted him to look but when he became too invested, she shouted in the dark night while the chaos of the case unfolded around them.

“I don’t like quitting either,” she said. “When Father Joe said not to give up…”

Mulder held his hand out to her to help her out of the boat and they pulled it onto the sandy beach together.

“Not quite a tower of office furniture,” Mulder grunted as he pulled and she pushed.

“I don’t have a stapler on me anyway,” she replied quietly and he laughed.

She grabbed the packed lunch from inside the boat while Mulder brought the blanket for them to sit on. Mulder spread the blanket under a tree that would provide enough shade for Scully’s skin.

“What did you think it was about?” he asked. "About Father Joe?"

“I wanted it to be a blanket term for how hopeless I had been feeling with Christian,” she admitted as she set the bag on the edge of the blanket. She paused before she sat down and began unpacking their lunch. “I think he wanted me to keep searching. To keep looking and not give up when I needed to find you.”

“Whatever the source of the message, it has to mean something that we both got the outcome we wanted, doesn’t it?” he asked simply. It was a complete oversimplification of what they had gone through but Mulder was good at that when he felt the weight of complexities to be too much for them. “I didn’t die, I’m no longer a wanted man from the FBI and you’ve helped Christian beat his illness. We have our lives back because you didn’t give up.”

“Not just me,” she reminded him.

He opened the chilled bottle of wine from the bottom of the bag and poured them each a glass into the plastic cups that had been sitting on the top. “I never thought I would see the day I would be happy to see a screw cap wine bottle.”

Scully nodded in agreement and took her cup from Mulder. “What are we toasting?”

“Us,” he said confidently with a smile. “Maybe we should just toast you and the number of lives you saved in the last two weeks. Mine, Cheryl Cunningham and Christian…”

Scully hesitated.

“And my book deal?” he offered and she nodded. “Something for both of us.”

“This is cheesy,” she said before she clinked her plastic cup against his.

Mulder grinned. “We can have cheesy every _once_ in a while. You know, while we leave the darkness behind and appreciate the happiness we deserve.”

She took a sip of the wine and nodded. “This sounds _uncharacteristically_ optimistic of us.”

Mulder opened one of the containers and grinned. “We’re eating New York style pizza on a beach in Turks and Caicos while I live the life of a free man again. We can be a little uncharacteristically happy and optimistic.”

Scully took a slice and was surprised it was still warm. “I suppose this is a good upswing after what we’ve gone through.”

“I still say let the darkness try to find us,” Mulder said challengingly. “We can make it.”

She hoped he was right.

 


End file.
